An Iranian boy takes a tray of eggs at a grocery store in Tehran. Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images

Western economic sanctions targeting various sectors from banking to trade and energy are aimed at forcing Iran's leaders to comply with their international obligations on nuclear activities.

The leaders have remained defiant against six UN security council resolutions calling on them to halt enrichment of uranium, and they have refused to fully co-operate with the International Atomic Energy Agency over their nuclear programme. This has resulted in what are regarded as the toughest ever sanctions to be imposed on Iran since the Islamic revolution in 1979. On Monday, the EU tightened already tough sanctions on Iran by closing some of the larger loopholes in existing measures.

The sanctions are now taking their toll and compounding the country's economic woes. In recent weeks, Iran's national currency has been in a tailspin, dropping to all-time lows.

In response, Iranian media are ignoring former "red lines" on speaking or writing about the impact of sanctions and are publishing various accounts of how they are affecting people in certain areas, such as health services.

But how are sanctions affecting you? What is their impact on your day-to-day life? And who do you blame? Please let us know in the comment thread below. We will later post some of them here along with this article.

These are some of our previous articles about the impact of sanctions on Iranian people: